Hope for the Voiceless

Media is everywhere and it shapes our lives. We use it to communicate. We spend hours scrolling through Twitter feeds on our iPhones. We turn on television and Netflix to unwind and escape. Media is an expression and a reflection of our culture. It has been used to spark social revolts and upheavals (I’m looking at you, Arab Spring), and it’s been used to sell us a bunch of stuff we don’t need. Essentially, media is a way to tell stories; sometimes we tell those stories in 140 characters and other times we tell them though pictures and videos, but the stories are there and the stories are about us.

Take the example of TOMS shoes. TOMS is the innovative shoe (and now eye glasses) manufacturers that started the “One for One” movement. For every pair of shoes they sell, they donate a pair to a child in need. Their advertising and marketing campaigns heavily feature the image of hip, socially conscious twenty-somethings strutting around in their TOMS, making a difference in the world. It’s been extremely successful, having given away over 2 million shoes to kids around the world. Part of their success comes from the story they tell about their customers. Who wouldn’t want to be seen as a hip, socially conscious twenty-something because of the shoes they’re wearing? As a person who owns his fair share of TOMS, I can attest to the fact that there’s an appeal to wearing the shoes and being associated with the One for One movement. Buying and wearing the shoes allows me to believe I’m a good person who cares about kids, which may or may not be the truth, but that truth should ultimately be determined, not by the shoes I wear, but by the collective scope of my actions.

Now, the point is not to undermine TOMS because being a conscious consumer is a good and necessary thing. Socially responsible businesses are places you should buy from. The point is to demonstrate the ways stories are used in media to influence us. If we’re being completely honest, the stories can be good or bad, true or false, genuine or manipulative. It takes a lot of discernment to believe the stories that are beneficial, beautiful, and true, as opposed to the stories that are shaming, coercive, and dangerous, because many of the stories being told are being told to us, and about us, from someone who doesn’t care if the story ruins us. For many companies the bottom line is about profit. And the best way to get us to buy into their message is by speaking to our vulnerabilities, attempting to define us, and telling us what we’re worth (and how we could be worth more).

So when we talk about media being exploitative, we mean that there are a lot of messages being sent our way that tell us we’re lacking, we’re not good enough, and we’re incomplete. These messages are intended to get us to buy something or experience something because that thing will make us complete. In reality, however, it won’t. It’ll simply leave us a little further down the road with one more thing that didn’t satisfy. There are a lot of unhealthy messages being perpetuated as normal, and the media we engage with affects the way we view ourselves and those around us. Ultimately, it isn’t about the one page Dolce and Gabanna [trigger warning] ad in the magazine or the three and a half minute music video – no, it’s about the collective impact all of these messages have on us.

Read the rest of this post at the HFTV website: here.

If you’ve never seen it before, you should check out our fabric of exploitation. We reference it often, use it in presentations, and in a lot of ways it’s the framework we’ve developed to look at the problem of media exploitation and the demand for human trafficking. It’s our attempt to break down the progression of exploitation in our society into groups, differentiating each level by degree of exploitation, size of the population actively engaged, and proximity to violence and abuse. The purpose of the fabric is to show that, though there are different levels, they’re all a part of the same system of injustice.

How can we imagine a country without human trafficking if we routinely objectify women’s bodies in advertising?

How can we talk about a world where everyone is free when our intrinsic drive for power and sex results in a society where one in four women will be victims of sexual assault?

That’s a lot of people being abused. That’s also a lot of people abusing. [to read the rest of this article, visit the HFTV website]

We’re incredibly excited to announce that HFTV is becoming a division of Michigan Abolitionist Project! This is a group we’ve worked with a number of times over the past couple of years, and we cannot imagine a better organization to adopt us. The passion, energy, and talent of the MAP team is going to challenge and better us, and we can’t wait to see what this partnership brings! They’re truly leaders in Michigan’s response to human trafficking.

Check out the MAP website to find out more about their various initiatives and projects.

Peace,

HFTV

I couldn’t believe they were smiling. I couldn’t believe they were laughing. After what they’d been through, it’s hard to imagine smiling or laughing coming easy. The court room was the first I’d ever been in, and it was much different than I expected. Though there was a huge desk, behind which the judge sat, there were no cameras apart from ours; there were no witnesses and no defendants. Boxed lunches from a local deli sat on a table pushed up against the side wall, and the women of CATCH Court were patiently waiting their turn to grab one, chatting with each other and joking. I sat along the back wall along with three of my friends, feeling out of place.

We were on a film tour for a documentary we’re making exploring the demand for prostitution and human trafficking in the United States. It was our fourth day on the road and, though we’d been researching and preparing for two years, there’s nothing that could have prepared me for that room. By that time I’d read countless academic articles about prostitution; everything from legislation assessments to complex and nuanced discussions about the nature of choice and freedom. In that moment it all seemed high minded and unimportant. Though I believe those kinds of conversations have their place, they cannot be divorced from the human experience. Right then, the abuse of strangers became very personal.

CATCH Court is a program started by Judge Paul Herbert in Columbus, OH. When women are arrested on prostitution charges some of them have to opportunity to enter the CATCH program. There, they receive therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, and they attend drug rehabilitation programs. Previously, women would be arrested, held in prison for a while, and then released, often with no place to go but back to the streets or the pimp who was selling them before. It was a system that offered no hope, only reinforcement of the idea that, “You’re no good.” But in CATCH Court, they’re told a different story; a story that reinforces their strength and their pricelessness.

So I sat in the back, camera in hand, carefully angling it because there were a few women who didn’t want to be on film. In front of me was a blond haired girl, no older than 24, just about my age, and she asked me, “Hey, what are you guys filming this for?” A documentary on the demand for human trafficking, I told her. “That’s really awesome,” she whispered, “People need to know about this stuff.” Smiling, she turned back to her lunch.

She’s right. People need to know that human trafficking is real, because human trafficking is an ugly thing. But it’s really just a part of a larger societal acceptance of exploitation and violence against women. In pornography we see themes of degradation and humiliation. In advertising we see bodies turned into marketing tools. In our neighborhoods we hear stories of domestic abuse. Human trafficking, and violence against women in general, is not someone else’s issue. It’s personal because it’s our issue. It’s our issue because it’s personal.

Pornography still perpetuates ideals and standards of beauty based solely on physical attributes and sexual availability. ‘Deviant’ forms of sexuality are still considered obscure and taboo by people consuming pornography. Pornography doesn’t necessarily open up a space for people to explore their sexuality free from societal expectations and pressures. For example, a straight man looking at gay pornography would still be judged and stigmatized by other straight men who think that viewing gay pornography makes a person gay. Just because gay pornography exists and is available for consumption, it doesn’t make it accessible to everyone. There are still hegemonic ideas about gay pornography being less masculine than pornography aimed at straight men. And even though variety may be seen in pornography, people are still being objectified through a lens that categorizes characteristics as better or worse than others (these breasts are bigger therefore they are better (or vice versa), this white girl is more desirable than this black girl, this thin girl is more desirable then this fat girl, this young girl is more desirable than this old woman, etc.). And pornography doesn’t just suffer the effects of society in the sense that it strives to be different but people are conditioned to view thinga a certain way; instead pornography invites you to classify and judge, separate and elevate certain things while diminishing others (especially in regards to age where youth is elevated). It doesn’t embrace deviance, then, it perpetuates it. Large breasted, blonde, white women are seen as mainstream and the most acceptable (i.e. Jenna Jameson), while gay pornography etc. is kept to the fringes and only watched by “other people” or “deviant people”. Pornography advocates cannot champion the industry as serving minority sexualities if it puts them in the same place society does.

Pornography does, however, serve to normalize and sexualize violence and dominance and portray women as constantly sexually available. It conditions consumers to separate sex from relationships, human connection, intimacy, and proximity (as in, sex isn’t about being near someone, it’s about being isolated and alone.) In essence, it feeds the flesh and starves the soul, bringing about no real fulfillment, only hunger pangs you no longer know how to satisfy.

To explore these thoughts further, and from a better source, read Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality by Gail Dines

When we talk about ending the demand for domestic sex-trafficking, it doesn’t take us long to dive into our dominant metaphor: the “fabric of exploitation.” 

We talk about this fabric because we can’t divorce human trafficking from a culture that fosters exploitation at almost every level. It’s a seemless garment. It’s a fabric. Or rather, it’s a system. It’s an entire system that teaches our young men that women are predominantly sexual creatures to be sexually consumed in our sexual marketplace. We teach this early and often in American culture. 

So, pick your metaphor.

One market. 

One fabric. 

One system. 

But at the end of the day you can’t isolate yourself and try to fix just one thing without working at fixing the whole thing. You can’t just target the johns who purchase sex. You have to challenge the culture that breeds John in the first place. 

It is the structure, or the system that defines this problem. For all of the talk of demand, and the elements that foster our cultural spirit of exploitation, things like escort services, strip clubs, legalized brothels, pornography… all of these are rooted in the system. 

And how does one work for justice in the overwhelming face of a system? 

To facilitate real change, we have to imagine and enact strategies that question the system as a whole. We have to start imagining substantive change rather than merely working within the current system. We have to expose the world and this system as something that can be ruptured and reconfigured. We have to dream about alternate possibilities, or as Peter Rollins likes to say, we have to “experiment with small insurrectionary spaces.” 

It was that phrase “insurrectionary spaces” that hooked me. 

Insurrection: rebellion - revolt - uprising - insurgency - rising. 

Now we’re talking. Now we’re getting somewhere. 

Perhaps this is what we were after all along. To challenge the hearts and minds of men (who drive the demand for domestic sex-trafficking) to rebel against the system. To revolt against a way of life that has removed the inherent worth, dignity, and humanity from our sisters, daughters, and mothers. To uprise against the very structure that has taught us to constantly objectify women at almost every turn. 

And while it sounds daunting to tackle the system, working for systemic change… I think there are more men out there than we think we are ready to join the insurgency to to experiement with small insurrectionary spaces. 

So create some of these spaces. The next woman you see, look her in the eyes. Rebel against the system that wants to objectify, to lust, to stare, to instantly place sexual value on her. Next commercial you see that drives your eyes to just another pair of breasts, fight back. Shut it down. 

Because we need more men to join this insurrection. We need more young men who can stand against the system. 

Writer and musician Josh Garrels said it well in his song, “The Resistance,”

“I was born into a system constructed for failure. It’s a sinking ship manned by drunken sailors…  

Follow new rules with invisible strings, And become a puppet in the diabolical scheme.

How do good men become part of the regime? They don’t believe in resistance.” 

At Hope for the Voiceless, we certainly don’t want to always rely on terms that are so loaded with militaristic connotations. But maybe this is our new narrative- we believe in resistance. 

We believe in more and more young men of the insurrection. 

We believe in dreaming about a new system that gives back what we stole from our women. 

- Phil